If I use java 8 version 60 with the java 3d 1.5 libraries installed by hand, the 3D Viewer window shows but all grey (only the menu is readable). A CPU is stuck at 100%, and the terminal shows this error:

Others can chime in, but I’ll argue that it is kind of an uphill battle. The number of bugs that prohibit usability in 3D Viewer have been increasing quite a bit since the Java 8 issues. Some folks (mostly @ctrueden) have been playing whack-a-mole with 3D Viewer bugs, but it has been like an overcaffeinated red queen effect. I mean come on, he forked and started maintaining an alternate java3d in scijava; Curtis has better things to do than that.

With the demise of Java3D a lot of effort would have to be invested into swapping out the backend renderer. In the meantime @skalarproduktraum wrote a killer library, Scenery, that supports OpenGL, the new Vulkan API from Khronos, VR, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some features. I spent a couple of hackathons prototyping a ThreeDViewer building on top of Scenery, and @skalarproduktraum, @haesleinhuepf, @ctrueden, and even @axtimwalde have added code to the new viewer. For the past year I’ve moved across the US, started a new lab (and life, for that matter), and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get funding for an RA to help on this (hence slow coding progress). Nevertheless, I’m off to CSBD/CBG (in less than 1 month now) for essentially the entire summer to work near the wizards of Dresden to get ThreeDViewer to a mature state.

The short answer: I punt on answering the specific question in hopes of replying with the release of a replacement viewer. I have to apologize for this. It is terribly frustrating having to punt until my pilgrimage this summer, but hopefully everyone will be happier with the result. Get your VR headsets, 3D datasets ready, we’re going to have an amazing Scenery-based 3D visualization package for ImageJ ready in the near future.

Thanks for the efforts on new developments. The real issue is adapting e.g. TrakEM2 and other plugins that use the 3D Viewer for visualization. One would need a drop-in replacement API or close enough for any successor to fully replace the 3D Viewer.

For short-term success with Java 8: dig into the problems with Java 3D 1.6 and fix them. I do not have sufficient bandwidth to investigate them, but others in the community could. I think many of them might be simpler than we fear. For example, fiji/3D_Viewer#17 was fixed by a simple change to Java’s command line options.